THIS IS YOUR AD BUDGET ON DRUGS

The federal government has spent about $1.2 billion since 1998 on
scores of television, print and radio ads designed to discourage drug
use among youth. President Bush has requested another $120 million for
next year.

But not only do these admonishments not work, they are -- like so many
ham-handed government interventions -- counterproductive.

Based on an independent evaluation of the campaign by Westat Inc., the
Government Accountability Office on Friday recommended cutting back
funding for the effort. Westat found the ads had no "significant
favorable effects" in deterring children from trying marijuana or in
getting them to stop. In fact, it found that more 12 1/2- to
13-year-old boys and girls were trying the drug after seeing the ads.

This should hardly be a surprise. One recent TV ad, for example, shows
a nurse standing over a boy who appears to have his fist stuck in his
mouth. The boy mumbles something, and the nurse translates: "Yesterday
my friends told me to smoke some pot and I did. Then today they said I
should try and fit my fist into my mouth. It fits but I can't get it
out."

Wow. Deep stuff. Can we roll that back to see how many nanograms cause
impairment?

Another ad in the campaign famously showed an egg frying in a pan,
warning, "This is your brain on drugs." Far from recoiling in horror,
the same puckish American sense of humor that caused our forebears to
adopt the disparaging Redcoat anthem "Yankee Doodle" as their own
marching song has led Americans to create T-shirts warning "This is
your brain on podcasts," "This is your brain on political
correctness," etc.

These "public service ads" generally run at a lower cost -- or free,
on a "time available" basis -- under the rationale that they, well ...
"serve the public." Such an explanation makes it sound as though
commercial stations can run them or not, as they please. In fact, so
long as the federal government has the authority to renew a station's
license -- or seize this multimillion-dollar asset and hand it to
someone else -- station managers know the time they dedicate to such
"public service" ads and programming is being added up, and that any
shortfall can be held against them.

If the ads or programming in question simply familiarize viewers with
voting locations, or flood warnings, that's fine. But the reason
America has a free press is that the founders realized the public
would be best "served" with a vigorous public debate on issues of the
day.

"Public service," on the other hand, is increasingly a euphemism for
"propaganda" -- only the official government line need be presented.

Americans -- even America's kids -- show an admirable skepticism
toward such simple-minded "orders from on high."

Let's not waste any more on this folly.